The building and the street around the California Hotel in Oakland was full of shadows. Shadows that whispered stories of past lives, glamour, and tragedy from its ancient brick walls. The first time I saw the California Hotel was many years ago and I was both scared and comforted by its vastness that seemed to envelope San Pablo Avenue from all directions. Scared because of its sheer enormity and comforted because it was the first chance for insideness for me and my poor mama after a long stretch of being vehicular housed, police-harassed and outside.

Since the recent struggle of California Hotel residents to stay housed and now the triumph of their self-management launch, I thought back on my first day at the California and how nice it was to have a roof, albeit roach-filled and rodent infested.

In 1991 while my mama and I were still dealing with homelessness we watched as the California Hotel was closed for a $9 million dollar renovation and then re-opened as a single room occupancy hotel with on-site supportive services managed by Oakland Community Housing, Inc. (OCHI) a non-profit housing developer. The windows were new and shiny and the paint was fresh.

It seemed like a dream come true for many of the very poor elders who were re-housed there after the renovation. Safety, cleanliness, and overall management had been ongoing problems before the renovation which were now supposedly dealt with.

My mother and I felt an uneasiness in our gut. Renovation, renewal, redevelopment: these “re” words were never safe for poor folks and more often than not they were extremely dangerous. HUD’s HOPE VI project was fond of using the “re” words when they demolished over 90 percent of their housing only to replace them with mixed income housing units that only housed certain people most of whom didn’t live there before it was “re’d.”

Renewal, redevelopment, and one for one replacement are almost always myths for poor people of color and like the ongoing redevelopment efforts of West Oakland and Bayview. We never seem to last into the next “re”

As the recent mismanagement scandal with OCHI resulting in eviction notices being served on the all 72 disabled and elder residents of the hotel and subsequent terrifying raids by the Oakland Police Department, I could only imagine my poor mama Dee shaking her head in that “I told you so” way she always did.

But then I found out about the resistance of the tenants and how they launched an effort to do what all poor people of color are completely capable of doing, but rarely given the opportunity to realize, a chance to self-manage our living spaces. A dream that POOR has been struggling to realize for over 10 years in our HOMEFULNESS Project, but still hasn’t raised funding for.

As poor folks we are constantly told we need someone else to manage our housing, manage our books, manage our little bits of money and manage our lives, because it is assumed we can’t be trusted to do it for ourselves. I find this ironic, not only in light of the California Hotel mismanagement by so many so-called experts, and the tenants recent successful self-management but also because as poor folks, people of color, indigenous folks we have been successful stewards of land and property and community for hundreds of years.

On July 30, the California Hotel tenants won a victory when Alameda County Superior Court Judge Keller granted them another 30 days before ruling on whether or not they may continue to reside in their housing.

Perhaps if the tenants were given the financial support that corporations like John Stewart and OCHI receive to manage housing the tenants could handle their own management just fine.